Kuja Meri?

Despite nearly forty years of war, two decade-long occupations by former Cold War superpowers anda security vacuum that could engulf the region, the world is turning a blind eye to the fate of Afghanistan’speople – especially its refugees.

A spiraling security situation, weak government and abysmal economic prospects mean Afghans are trying toleave in huge numbers. But unlike Syrians, Iraqis, or Eritreans, in 2016 Afghans were excluded from theEU-Turkey deal, which only considered asylum applications from people deemed to have a 75% or higherchance of making it. Germany is sending planeloads of Afghans home, the United Kingdom has also embarkedon deportations, and Pakistan and Iran are sending home hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees.

Their stories have taught me that there is a serious distortion between what migrants and refugees hope forin their new lives abroad, and the stark reality of what they find once they leave.

That is why I started this project. Called “Kuja Meri?” in Dari, meaning “Where are you going?”, it has beendesigned with an Afghan audience in mind. To reach this audience, the project was exhibitedin the streets of Kabul. Starting October 27, 2017, around 50 billboard-sized photographs were pasted on theconcrete blast walls surrounding the Ministry of Information in the centre of Kabul.

Why are Afghan refugees in particular so unwelcome? A major reason for their limited chances of asylum isrooted in the NATO-led war, which officially ended combat missions in 2014. The war is increasingly seenas a failure by Afghans: large swathes of the country are under Taliban control and Islamic State has madeinroads. But for NATO countries, which at the peak of the surge in 2010-11 had 130,000 foreign troops inthe country, the war was a political success, and cannot be seen as a failure.